Last week, I had the opportunity to visit the three Baltic countries for Sun Microsystems, talking about MySQL powering the Web economy. The tour started on Monday and Tuesday in Vilnius, Lithuania, followed by Riga on Wednesday and Tallinn on Thursday. Many similarities between the countries, which are externally often seen as one unit and which internally sometimes view each other as siblings.

I was joined during the trip by Dutch Sun colleague Martin de Jong, who observed that each of the countries have a larger area than the Netherlands, whereas the combined .lt .lv and .ee population isn’t even half of that of the Netherlands.

But the economic importance of the Baltics is increasing. The Sun Microsystems activities are being managed through Sun Finland, whose country manager Hannu Nyländen accompanied Martin and myself through most of the tour.

I’ll offer some country specific observations, but let me start by saying that the countries don’t share a mutually intelligible language. While Lithuanian and Latvian are related and share some words, they are at least as far apart as German and English. They’re both very old Indo-European languages, with Lithuanian being the older one, with one well-informed Vilnius attendee claiming close relationship between Lithuanian and Sanskrit. Estonian isn’t Indo-European at all, but related to Finnish. Probably a bit closer to Finnish than German is to English (but quite a bit more distant than, say, Danish is from Swedish). At any rate, this leaves young Baltic people speaking English to each other, a bit older ones speaking Russian, whereas a generation or two prior to that, many would likely have spoken German to each other.

The trip started in Vilnius. Sadly, long-time MySQL colleague Domas Mituzas was in the US, so I didn’t meet with him. Instead, we were hosted by Sun Microsystem’s local Business Development Manager Rolandas Kymantas, who had gathered perhaps 60 Lithuanians into Reval Hotel Vilnius, where the venue was held.

I was very challenged to give the first five minutes of my speech in Lithuanian, as pronunciation is non-trivial and the stress was very challenging, on a par with Russian.

To continue my habit of writing blogs in languages I don’t speak, I started a blog also in Lithuanian. The blog is at http://blogs.arno.fi/laisvas_zodis/, where Laisvas žodis means (or at least is supposed to mean) “Free speech”.

The second destination was Riga, familiar to many MySQLers from our Developer Meeting two months ago. Here, we were hosted by Evijs Taube, Sun’s Business Development Manager for Latvia. The event was in Reval Hotel Riga (the one with the bar on the 26th floor), and coincided with the Latvian Open Technologies Association’s event. LATA (for Latvijas atvērto tehnoloģiju asociācija) and its sponsors (among them Sun) had managed to collect a whopping 350 participants to the event.

I was happy to note that my attempt at speaking Latvian was greeted by the audience. One attendee, Janis from Daugavpils (also known as Tvinky), posted a recording of it online. And my Latvian blog is live on http://blogs.arno.fi/labrit/, named Labrīt! for “Good morning!”. I’m curious to see whether there will be any reaction to them, by MySQL’s Latvian friends, such as Michael Dexter, who helped us a lot in September and whom it was a pleasure to meet again.

Estonia and Tallinn was the third and final destination. Again, the hotel belonged to the same chain. Reval Hotel Tallinn is somewhat of a double name, as “Reval” is the old Swedish and German name for Tallinn.

Martin de Jong and I were alone here, as Hannu had left for Finland. Our host was Sun’s Estonian BizDev mgr Maidu Harjak. He had collected roughly as many attendees as Rolandas in Lithuania. On account of knowing Finnish, the Estonian speech wasn’t quite as difficult as Lithuanian or Latvian. Creating an Estonian blog was a bit harder, though, as Google Translate doesn’t help me with that. Instead, I had to resort to Aivar Joonas, my Estonian friend and reconstruction expert working at my country house in Finland. With his help, I chose to host the blog on http://blogs.arno.fi/vaba_lava/. Vaba lava is what you say when it’s time for anyone to speak up, “The floor is open”.

My blogs in Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian so far only contain my speeches in the respective languages. And realistically, I won’t post very frequently to them (in particular, Estonian is not supported by Google Translate). Nonetheless, I hope there is some benefit from having my local presentations online.

Links:

• Vaba lava: Kas Kaj räägib eesti keelt? http://blogs.arno.fi/vaba_lava/
• Labrīt! Vai Kaj runāt latviešu? http://blogs.arno.fi/labrit/
• Laisvas žodis: Ar Kajus kalbu lietuviškai? http://blogs.arno.fi/laisvas_zodis/
• Blog aggregator for all my blogs, across languages: http://kaj.arno.fi/

Did you see the press release today, called “Sun MySQL Server Solution“?

What it means is that we start seeing the fruits of what we’ve been talking about all along since the acquisition, such as when launching MySQL this week in Argentina and in Uruguay:

• That Sun remains committed to MySQL’s cross-platform presence, doing at least as much as before the acquisition on any individual platform or for any individual stack.

• That the acquisition of MySQL through Sun means unique opportunities for us to optimise MySQL to run best on Sun.

The unique opportunities to make MySQL run best on Sun is due to the fact that we get additional resources, Sun’s expertise, and the possibility to influence not just MySQL code, but also the surrounding hardware and software.

Link: http://www.sun.com/systems/solutions/mysql/

Uruguay is the Switzerland of South America, in many ways: when it comes to bank secrets, to the size of the country, and to the relative cleanliness compared to neighbouring countries. Uruguay has a similar accent to that of Buenos Aires, and a highly developed economy with demanding database users.

Like yesterday in Argentina, I could today be part of the MySQL launch in Uruguay. Following our script from Argentina (meet press, present to customers, meet individual customers), the difference in Uruguay is that we mostly work through partners.

The most prominent Sun partner in Uruguay is Arnaldo C. Castro S.A. They hosted our customer event in hotel Cala di Volpe (Giuseppe told me this Italian name means “Bay of Foxes”, and quite like Argentina, Uruguay has plenty of Italian immigrants). I met with plenty of representatives for Arnaldo Castro, until finally, I met with Arnaldo himself. I didn’t dare ask him if he’s the younger brother of Fidel, nor did I think of asking whether he is the uncle of Alexio, my Salsa teacher in Munich.

Shaking hands with Arnaldo Castro

Uruguay was a rewarding experience. Swift transport across “River Plate”, which is just about the widest river I’ve ever seen. Or what other river does it take nearly an hour to fly across? You can hardly see the other side of the river from one “river bank”, as below on the Ramblas (shore boulevard) on the Uruguayan side.

Do you see Argentina across the River Plate from the Ramblas in Montevideo? I don’t.

I also gave another presentation of my Spanish speech. At the end, I took questions from the audience, and proudly understood all four questions in Spanish, without translation. I am getting to feel more and more affinity for what in Sun speak is called “the emerging markets”.

Señoras y señores, I am happy to have been part of the MySQL launch in Argentina yesterday. Visiting Argentina has been a great opportunity to meet with the MySQL users and not-yet-users in a country with 30 degrees Celsius, with colourful houses in La Boca, with an omnipresent Diego Maradona, and only minor challenges in the form of payment methods when using local transport.

On Monday evening, I visited the Universidad Nacional De La Matanza. Together with Sun Evangelist Ezequiel Singer, I met with university students, a surprisingly low proportion of which used MySQL (less than half). This surprises me mostly because I know South America as an area with a strong MySQL community, witnessed in part by the several MySQL employees from Argentina and Brazil, even at the point of Sun’s acquisition of MySQL.

Tuesday was the main launch day, with customer and press events, and a customer visit to the Government of Buenos Aires. I had the opportunity of describing the reasoning behind Sun’s acquisition MySQL’s integration process in Sun, and our plans for MySQL to run best on Sun software.

None of that may be news to the majority of MySQL users. However, it feels new and refreshing every time I have the opportunity to deliver the message to a new audience. And doing it in Argentina was a special treat, as it was the first time I delivered a speech in Spanish “without human intervention”. For my earlier presentations in languages I don’t speak (Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Czech, Turkish, Russian and Portuguese), I had asked Sun colleagues to translate my speech. This time, I asked Google Translate, like for my Italian and Russian blogs. This made it possible for me to deliver a more personal note, with last-minute changes, but also very innovative grammar. I alternately addressed the audience in singular and in plural, and also seemed a bit uncertain about which gender I should use for myself. I have now published the speech on my newly-opened Spanish blog http://blogs.arno.fi/poquito/.

The creative grammar didn’t seem to overly disturb the press, and today, there are reviews at least in Canal AR, Tecnozona and Portinos, including some excerpts below:

Canal AR: ¿Por qué Sun compró MySQL?

Para la ocasión, Sun Argentina contó con la presencia de Kaj Arnö, VP de MySQL y “embajador” de MySQL para Sun. Tal como explica en su blog corporativo, compartirá charlas con clientes de Sun y usuarios de MySQL, tanto en Argentina como en Chile y Uruguay. Por otra parte, curiosamente, Kaj publicó en su blog personal fotos de diversos árboles del Jardín Botánico de Buenos Aires.

Tecnozona: MySQL es de Sun… pero ya no es una novedad

Kaj Arnö, Vice President Community Database Group nunca se denominaría a sí mismo como un evangelizador. Este finés (no digas finlandés), cuyo idioma original es el sueco (no el finés) y que dice aprender varios otros lenguajes gracias a Google Translate, que se niega a ponerse los auriculares de traducción y que no pierde ocasión de un comentario humorístico es, por si hacía falta aclararlo más, todo un personaje.
Muy parecido al uruguayo Daniel Viglietti, Kaj (léase Kai) empezó leyendo en castellano y presentándose como el embajador de MySQL para Sun. Se refirió a las ventajas de tener Google Translate y la Web 2.0, gracias a lo cual tiene hasta un blog en español, aparte de haber traducido el discurso.

Portinos: MySQL promete conservar su esencia

Está en Buenos Aires el finlandés Kaj Arnö, vicepresidente de la comunidad de MySQL, la base de datos adquirida este año por Sun Microsystems, y asegura que se conservará su esencia de código abierto.

Kaj desempeña el rol de “embajador de la marca en Sun”, lo que lo lleva a reunirse con empleados y clientes a nivel mundial.

Kaj Arnô explicó la estrategia actual de MySQL y explicó que, entre otras, si seguirá siendo una aplicación free para la enorme base de usuarios particulares.

Bloggers.com.ar: La estrategia de Sun para My SQL

“Si nos miden en volumen de ventas el número puede ser chico, pero habría que sondear entre todos los que utilizan MySQL, incluido los usuarios de Oracle”, respondió a la pregunta sobre su base instalada Kaj Arnö (foto), vicepresidente de la comunidad de la base de datos MySQL que pasó por la Argentina para presentar formalmente la adquisición de Sun Microsystem. El ejecutivo, que venía de Chile y viajaba luego para Uruguay aunque la gira por los mercados emergentes también abarcará a China, enfatizó la importancia de la región para el negocio de la compañía: “Sudámerica es una región muy importante para el open source”, sostuvo.

INFOmail iTV por Fabián García:

No por nada, la presentación que dio Don Kaj Arnö – VP de la Comunidad de Base de Datos de Sun… o sea, un evangelizador/embajador de MySQL around the world – fue cortita, pasando los slides del ppt a toda velocidad, y luego estando a disposición para preguntas (* de paso, un capo Kaj… se notaba que tiene su caractercito el finlandés – o finés, aprendí que se puede decir de ambas formas -, pero se preparó todo un speech de intro en español – según él, traducido por Google Translate… aunque para mi estaba demasiado bien como para haber sido hecho por una máquina -, lo leyó muy pero muy bien, y fue muy gracioso – e igual entendía bastante el español - *)

Links:

• http://www.canal-ar.com.ar/noticias/noticiamuestra.asp?Id=6613
• http://www.portinos.com.ar/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4203:mysql-promete-conservar-su-esencia&catid=17:software&Itemid=36
• http://www.tecnozona.com.ar/?q=node/2148

After a few days at home in Munich, I was fortunate enough to fly to the Southern Hemisphere again. This time, I’m in Argentina, planning to visit also Uruguay and Chile.

I plan to meet with many Sun customers and MySQL users, and talk about Open Source. All Libre, some of it even Gratuita. The sign on the right is from Jardin Botánico in Buenos Aires, where I had some time off today. I’m posting some of the more private observations on blogs.arno.fi/isit so as not to spam this list with observations of Jacaranda trees. (Note: At the time of writing, not many of my South American observations are yet live.)

My prayers have been answered.

We have found a worthy replacement for Jay Pipes: Dups.

• Dups joined MySQL in July 2007.
• Dups until recently was in the MySQL Web Team, and has joined us now.
• Dups comes from Canada (Newfoundland).
• Dups even lives in Canada (Montreal).
• Dups will roam the North American continent to serve the MySQL community, to learn from it, to explain Sun to the community, and to explain the community to Sun.
• Dups is sometimes mistaken for Colin Charles, because of similarities in physical appearance.
• Dups has a somewhat challenging name, Duleepa Wijayawardhana.

I’m very happy we got Dups as our Jay clone, because

• Dups is a MySQL user since last century.
• Dups knows MySQL very well.
• Dups is an excellent communicator: he structures his thoughts clearly and writes an enjoyable language.
• Dups is a superb web developer, very competent to take over MySQL Forge.
• Dups’s heart beat strongly for the community already when I interviewed him for his Web position (our recruiting processes required an out-of-department interviewer, and I’m happy I volunteered).
• Dups enjoys photography, quite like I do.
• I have already managed to learn to write and pronounce Dups’s real name by rote (see: Duleepa Wijayawardhana! I didn’t even look it up.).
• Dups is a geek even by name, as his (sequentially) first name is Geekiyanage.

I’m looking forward to working with Dups, on all things community. And I’m hoping to learn some mountaineering from him, too — he’s climbed over 28% of the world’s Seven Summits (Kilimanjaro for the highest peak in Africa, Elbrus for the highest peak in Europe).

Welcome, Dups!

Links:

• Dups’s blog on joining: http://blogs.sun.com/dups/entry/don_t_panic
• Giuseppe’s blog on Dups joining: http://blogs.sun.com/datacharmer/entry/good_luck_jay_welcome_dups

Yesterday, I started my sporadic series of blog posts where I share my experiences improving my online manners through social networking websites, many of which are powered by MySQL. My first target was the traveller site Dopplr, and this time, it’s Google’s picture sharing site Picasa Web.

My starting point is the same: “Everyone else” among colleagues and friends was there long before me, and I feel like a latecomer. I want to go in, do what seems to be the right thing, and share the observations I had. And everything within the time constraint of not being able to do a full evaluation, as I obviously have other things to do as well.

Unlike Dopplr, starting with Picasa Web never required invitations. My first exposure to Picasa was through MySQL colleague Zack Urlocker’s biking trips. He shared albums of his trips, which I browsed through, and found “quite OK”. Meaning: Easy to consume pics posted by others, but no trigger for me to start producing web albums myself. When running with Zack, the Picasa topic occasionally popped up, with me expressing skepticism towards the time expenditure for uploading a gallery, and Zack saying it wasn’t that hard, as there is a good picture uploader. It turns out Zack was right, as I learned much later.

What triggered me to join Picasa Web was my blogging. A blog entry without a single picture isn’t very appealing, and some blog entries require many pictures. I had for long used a complex setup, uploading my pictures using Unix utility scp from my Mac to my account on @arno.fi. The domain arno.fi was a parallel domain to a now-extinct server grankulla.mysql.com, which I had to stop using after the Sun acquisition, as the use was bordering on the private. So I started to host arno.fi privately (a different story entirely) and became worried about bandwidth cost for the pics referred to from blogs.mysql.com/kaj. So the MySQL Web Team enabled uploading of pictures as part of the MySQL Wordpress blog site itself. This worked fine, but by this time I had already thought a bit about hosting the pics on Picasa or Flickr. So when I saw Picasa pictures automatically connected to Google profiles and Google maps, I decided to try out Picasa.

Like for all social networking sites, I obviously had to register. This wasn’t hard, and it was part of my general Google profile (Google Reader, Google Mail etc.). The real obstacle which had kept me from doing it earlier was installing the picture uploader, called “Picasa Web Albums Uploader“. I’m not a person who likes to tweak with the technical setup of my computers, hence the reluctance. But it was OK. I didn’t have to know anything in advance; the Picasa web site gave the relevant pointers and I wasn’t lead astray during the installation.

Next came the learning part, which in fact turned out to be fun. Uploading the pictures was trivial. I am a character based (”command line”) type of guy, hence the perceived ease-of-use of the scp utility. But merely dragging the pictures from the Mac Finder to the Picasa Uploader was easier still. And uploading pics with the Picasa Uploader came with two real benefits:

1. Automatic picture resizing into multiple sizes: 144px, 288px, 400px, 800px. For that I had used the resize command of Imagemagick, which took me quite a while to install, and which despite its command line nature wasn’t as fast and automagick as the ease of use of the Picasa Uploader for this specific task. Plus, Picasa relieves me of renaming pics in various resolutions to distinguish them from each other.
2. Easy housekeeping of album names / directories. I like order (not that I always succeed in keeping it). So I dislike putting all pics into a one single directory. The Picasa uploader provides me with a drop-down list of my previously used albums ( “directories”), which I can refill, or the opportunity to create a new album (”directory”). And at the point of upload, I can very quickly label the pics.

The next step is completely optional, but very “cool” and inspiring: I can tag the pictures, and I can place them on Google Maps.

Tagging is merely about finding out multiple, good descriptions for pictures, for later searches. So that doesn’t take long.

Placing the picture on the map can be everything from dead easy to very frustrating. For my pictures from Munich, I very simply typed in the address: just “Balanstr. 22″ for the pictures of my son trying to be an actor, and “Kleinfeldstr. 28b, Germering” for the pictures of my daughter by Riccardo Desiderio. For South Africa, it was much harder. It didn’t know Kievits Kroon, Reier road, or even Kameeldrift. I just had to point manually to somewhere north-east of Pretoria, where I assumed the pics were taken. That was a time drain.

Still, as a result, I got a nice map of where I took the pics of the trip, and if I’d like more detail, I’ll even see the individual pictures placed on a map.

The last step is about using the Picasa pictures in the blog itself. And this is also a bit simplified from my character-based scp blogging, where I had to semi-manually concatenate the first part of the picture urls (”http://kaj.arno.fi/”) with the name of the picture (”IMG_1234_Blabla.JPG”). In Picasa, I do the opposite, i.e. I cut-and-paste the huge text provided by Picasa, e.g.

<table style=”width:auto;”><tr><td><a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/YpJLrGsLVDIbs_jSHkAQ-Q”><img src=”http://lh5.ggpht.com/_6eAQKKvv8LA/SQwrd02hu3I/AAAAAAAAAXw/xvphDvabhsQ/s288/Kaj_RD_Kvadrat_B_7729.jpg” /></a></td></tr><tr><td style=”font-family:arial,sans-serif; font-size:11px; text-align:right”>Från <a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/kaj.arno.2/KajArnPortraits”>Kaj Arnö Portraits</a></td></tr></table>

and clean it up from surplus stuff to get only what I want, i.e.

<img src=”http://lh5.ggpht.com/_6eAQKKvv8LA/SQwrd02hu3I/AAAAAAAAAXw/xvphDvabhsQ/s288/Kaj_RD_Kvadrat_B_7729.jpg”/>

which I then paste into my Wordpress blog entry, perhaps adding an align=”right” or align=”left” in the process. And I take care to select the desired resolution: 144px, 288px, 400px or 800px; more than once, I’ve been happy with reducing the picture size further than what I would have done during my Imagemagick resize days.

In all of this, I see little if any problem, except the huge size of the licensing agreement I clicked through. That’s another barrier of entry. I don’t know what I really agreed to. Who knows, perhaps I even violated the agreement by taking screen shots of what Picasa looks like, for this blog entry?

Which brings me to my summary:

	Positive experiences: Many, and significant   + Very easy and fast to upload pictures + No need to shrink the pictures before upload — Picasa does it for you + Great to get many resolutions (144px, 288px, 400px, 800px) automatically + Fast integration of pictures in blog entries + Easy to keep pictures in order + Cool to tag the pictures for searches + Cool to place pictures on maps
	Negative experiences: Few, and all related to legalese   - Very irritating to have such a lengthy license agreement - The license agreement was so long and difficult that I don’t know what I agreed to - Meaning, I also don’t know if I’m missing something important - And why didn’t I get http://picasaweb.google.com/kajarno as my public page?
	My own confusion — no fault of the social network itself  Privacy! It isn’t even 20 % clear to me when it’s in my interest to allow the albums to be visible for everyone, and when it should be private (sure, I won’t put up pictures of drunken friends, or of myself in a similar state — but what about the innocent family pictures I linked above?) I first thought Picasa was a standalone photo organiser like iPhoto, and then learned it was a picture sharing thingie like Flickr, but only now reading Wikipedia do I understand I was right to begin with, and Picasa Web is separate from Picasa (good thing I read that before posting this blog entry, as I now sprinkled in the word “Web” here and there after “Picasa”)
	Remaining questions from my side   How much time should I spend uploading my existing pictures? Should I do that at least for my past blog pictures? Privacy! When should I make my pictures public? Why? Should I link the pictures from other social networking sites? How can I do that easily? Privacy again! Who will use the tags I provide Picasa Web with? Will that be of benefit or harm to me?

Starting to use Picasa Web Albums has so far been a very positive experience, and I do expect to manage all my online pictures in it, and get lots of good vibes from it going forward.

Links:

• Picasa Web Albums: http://picasaweb.google.com
• My Picasa Web page: http://picasaweb.google.com/kaj.arno.2/
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa#Picasa_Web_Albums

MySQL powers many of the social networks of Web 2.0. While it’s great that we constitute one of the tools of Web 2.0, we should also ourselves utilise the tools Web 2.0 provides for social networking. Comparing myself to colleagues, I feel like a slow follower in this discipline. “Everybody else” is already on Twitter, has hundreds and hundreds of contacts on LinkedIn, Xing and Facebook, puts their pics on Picasa and Flickr, bookmarks their pages on del.icio.us, and has fancy blogs that are registered everywhere. Myself, I have been half-heartedly entering contacts into LinkedIn, I have mismanaged my Xing account, I uploaded a tiny amount of pictures on Flickr two years ago, and have now taken my first steps trying out Twitter and Picasa. I’m not even registered on Facebook or del.icio.us.

And therefore I thought I would take a look at how to improve my online manners.

So what I’ll do over the next two months or so is to take a look at both the websites I’ve been mismanaging, and the new ones others have invited me to. I’ll do my best to fit in, but I’ll also come with some subjective commentary on what I experienced.

First in line is Dopplr, the social network for travellers.

I got invited to Dopplr by David Axmark in September 2007. I didn’t do anything with the invitation, as there were “other more important things to do”. In December 2007, I got invited by Giuseppe Maxia. One would think that these two invitations would have triggered me to do something about it, but no. I waited until I had to fix a complex set of travel involving David replacing myself in Japan so that I could go to South Africa. At the same time, I was asking Giuseppe about his travel plans and felt silly I had to ask and re-ask Giuseppe only because finding the relevant, freshest email was too cumbersome. That was the trigger that made me accept Giuseppe’s Dopplr invitation.

So I entered my basic data, which didn’t take many minutes. I could then see David’s and Giuseppe’s travel profiles, conveniently available under http://www.dopplr.com/ traveller/DavidAxmark and http://www.dopplr.com/traveller/gmaxia respectively. Looking at the right hand side on David’s data from today, it’s easy to see when he is where. I don’t need to ask him, nor does anyone else.

Next, I entered my travel plans for the rest of the year. Then, from my own itinerary, I noted something I hadn’t thought of. On the way back from Buenos Aires, I have a stopover in Frankfurt, which happens to coincide with when Giuseppe is there for a meeting. If the stopover is long enough, or Giuseppe has extra time to come to the airport, we might meet just because we happen to be in the same place at the same time. And that’s what Doppler is a lot about: Facilitating serendipitous meetings with people you know.

Next, I saw all the cool stats that Giuseppe and David had, based on having joined Dopplr a lot earlier. So I entered my 2008 travel, which took quite a while as I’ve travelled a lot and emitted carbon in a most horrible way. But it didn’t help — Dopplr still said I had travelled “0 km so far”. All that data entry in vain! Too bad.

But luckily, the stats were calculated for me overnight, in some kind of a batch job. I now have a nice timeline, telling me that I’ve been more on the road than at home in 2008:


I also have learnt that I’m as fast as a squirrel, with an average speed of 22,93 km/h.

Coolest of all is The Dopplr Raumzeitgeist, which tells me where I’ve been for the time period for which I’ve entered data into Dopplr:

If I had a cool web page to which I aggregate blogs and other stuff, such as Colin Charles does, I could paste the nice badge Dopplr provides me onto it. Either the small format (the first pic on this blog), or a big one, like this:

And this brings me to my first frustration with Dopplr. It tells me I’ve frequently been to “Nauvo”. No, no, no! I most certainly refer to the place I’ve been to as “Nagu”, not “Nauvo”. It’s a place with two names, of which in this case, I happen to use the same name as the majority of people living there. In the case of the second-most frequently visited place, I personally use “Helsingfors” (the Swedish name), but I can understand most people would use “Helsinki” (Finnish). And again, on fourth place, I’ve got one more place with multiple names. With most people I’ve discussed that trip, I’ve used the name “Wolkenstein“, which Dopplr expands to a long dual name, “Selva di Val Gardena - Wolkenstein in Groeden”. Better than just Selva, but still, not what I would pick myself.

Which brings me to my summary:

	Positive experiences: Many, and significant   + Great to instantly see where friends and colleagues travel + Great not to have disturb them with questions on “when are you where” + Great to get alerted to serendipitous presence in the same location, for my own planned trips + Cool to get all kinds of travel stat + Cool to see pics from Flickr automatically associated with trips
	Negative experiences: Few, and all related to Dopplr Big-Brother-changing place names   - Very irritating that Dopplr converted names like “Mariehamn” and “Nagu” to “Maarianhamina” and “Nauvo”, which are used only by a small minority of their respective inhabitants - Irritating that Dopplr converted “Helsingfors” (which is how I refer to my birth town) to “Helsinki” - Irritating that Dopplr converted “Wolkenstein” to the very long “Selva di Val Gardena - Wolkenstein in Groeden”
	My own confusion — no fault of the social network itself  I was first disappointed that Dopplr didn’t calculate my past travel stats, but happy again the following morning when they had been done My bad conscience for my carbon footprint didn’t exactly diminish It isn’t 100% clear to me whether it’s in my interest to allow the data to be visible for everyone, or just my approved co-travellers
	Remaining questions from my side   Will I have any real benefit from entering past data from years before 2008? Will there be an easy way to enter many past trips in batch, e.g. over email? When will fellow travellers allow me to see their travel plans? Should I enter “travel tips”? Will I find some benefit from using the data entry from my mobile phone or Twitter?

All in all, Dopplr was a very positive experience, and I do expect to manage my travel in it, and get lots of good vibes from it going forward.

Links:

• Dopplr: http://www.dopplr.com
• My Dopplr page: http://www.dopplr.com/traveller/KajArno
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopplr

Simon Phipps yesterday blogged about the emerging Sun Model for Open Source business:

As time has gone by, a clear “Sun Model” for open source business has been emerging, at least to my eyes. The summary of it is:

1. remove barriers to software adoption between download and deploy;
2. encourage a large and cohesive community of software deployers;
3. deliver, for a fee, the means to create value between deploy and scale, for those who need it.

Each software team at Sun interprets this model in a slightly different way, but the model holds pretty much everywhere and works regardless of the license for the code. As a business model, it doesn’t have much to say about the nature of the development community, but I believe dysfunction in that area is a barrier to adoption so it’s always an issue if dysfunction exists.

This model is the natural progression of the concept of monetising at the point of value, and I hope to explore it more over the coming weeks. Feel free to ask questions below about the things needing clarification.

Expressing the Sun Model this concisely is not easy. Just three points, two of which are one-liners at least on my screen. And at least MySQL follows it, not just to the spirit, but I’d venture to say we follow it even to the letter.

Impressive job, Simon!

One of the most interesting people I met during my trip to South Africa earlier this week was Aslam Raffee. He keynoted the Sun event, sharing his view of the South African government’s stance on Open Source.

Aslam has two roles: He is the Chief Information Officer at the South African Department of Science and Technology. He is also the chairperson of the OSS Workgroup in the South African Government IT Officers Council.

From Aslam’s presentation, it is clear that South Africa is ahead of the game when it comes to finding out ways to mandate the use of Open Source in Government. I had the privilege to talk to Aslam over lunch, and he described the process whereby the OSS Workgroup is moving the usage of Open Source products like MySQL from optional to default status.

I have a new top example to talk about, right alongside India and Brazil!